The Tudors
I have mixed feelings about this modern production. On one hand, I love the era and am drawn to it. I like many of the characters, the slow pace, and the fairly decent treatment of the topics. On the other hand, I am put off by the “soap opera” elements. When the first series ended with the death of Cardinal Wolsey, I was afraid the series would take a sharp anti-Catholic turn. I am now about half way through the second season, and I am impressed so far. Henry is increasingly erratic and narcissistic. Cromwell is creepy and sinister. Anne Boleyn is conniving, and her father is even worse. Indeed, the only honorable characters are Queen Catherine, Thomas More, and John Fisher. I was deeply impressed with how it portrayed the deaths of More and Fisher. Here is the death of Fisher, which I found incredibly moving.
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Oh, come now, MM, I’m sure you know better than to call this rubbish “history.”
Sure, More was a sainted martyr, but he was also a religious fanatic who actually BURNED so-called “heretics” during the time he was Henry’s chancellor.
Henry is being represented in this series as an Adonis long past the time he’d become a swollen, lust-filled monster.
His divorce from Catherine of Aragon was purely dynastic in its motivation, but he kept on with his serial monogamy long past the time he’d provided his kingdom a male heir.
The completely altruist, theologically serious resistance to Protestant heresy and England’s Erastianism comes later, during the persecutions under Elizabeth, who actually killed Catholics about whom she knew they’d found a way to obey both her AND the pope.
Henry was an emotionally stunted, confused man, but, compared to the monstrously clever Elizabeth and her radically Calvinist advisors, Cecil and Walsingham, he was a “conservative” regarding the religious settlement of England, and might at any time have made his peace with the pope. Elizabeth, on the other hand, made her bargain with the most radical of the heretics, in order to secure her throne, and thus made Britain–and, I would argue, all of Anglo-Saxon culture–permanently imbued with a form of Protestantism that is more intrinsically hostile to Christian orthodoxy than is the Lutheranism of the continent.
Wow. A post where I have nothing about which to take issue with MM.
I also enjoy the show. I find it entertaining. Like you, I particularly liked the heroic portrayals of Catherine, More, and Fisher.
I don’t get premium cable channels, so what I’ve seen I’ve seen on Netflix (which included the no-longer-available 3rd season premier which was briefly on-line).
After seeing Fisher’s death, I wondered how they could top that for More’s but they did.
Digby’s point that there are many historical inaccuracies is undeniable, but I find it a relief to see the admission of the possibility that truly holy people have existed in the world.
“Sure, More was a sainted martyr, but he was also a religious fanatic who actually BURNED so-called “heretics” during the time he was Henry’s chancellor.”
So…St. Thomas Moore not good enough for you, eh?
This is the ideal portrayal of what we need as a leadership based on a holiness grounded in God’s love that then raises all human emotions to a level of unity with one another in facing suffering and death. However, it was quite interesting at the moment of death they appeared to be shocked back into their normal reality as they attempted to hide from what they just witnessed.
Instead of being united in love as they had been for brief moments now they were united in shock and love was lost.
More met the end he’d bestowed upon others. Sticking to one’s beliefs isn’t any claim to fame, it just appears that way to those sharing them. “Sainted martyr” or “stubborn heretic”, all depends on the POV.
It’s interesting how More is a ‘truly holy’ person to Catholics. The ‘heretics’ he’d executed would disagree. Then again, they had it coming eh? I mean, distributing the Bible in English…clearly a capital offense.
More referred to one priest he had executed as “the devil’s stinking martyr.” I’m sure there were those who thought the same of More.
Gerald A. Naus:
Please spare me your demonized version of More.
The fact of the matter being that heresy was a capital offense and, as a result, suffered the penalty of capital punishment.
In addition, I am not so surprised that More’s particular devotion to genuine Gospel and the preservation of Truth which in its very preaching, and, above all, doctrine, affects intimately the very Salvation of the Souls of Men, is a wholly alien matter to moderns as yourself.
Even further, relying on such tired anti-Catholic details as the one concerning the distribution of the Bible in English is hardly noteworthy; most especially, since it’s the particular English translation of the bible that was the issue rather than it having been translated into English (besides, there were, contrary to such anti-Catholic fables, English bibles then even prior to the heretics who did thus).
Though I’m sure such “Catholics” as yourself & digbydolben are more interested in the more sinister narratives since any dedicated Catholic as More deserves to be demonized in the name of that splendid Heresy which should prevail over Catholicism, to which you and digbydolben had traded your very souls to for whatever pieces of silver you both received in return.
I can’t speak for digby, but I asked to be paid in Euros rather than silver.
I actually recommended that the episode on the martyrdom of More be shown in parishes (minus the one brief sex scene).
Season 3 also portrays the Church kindly for the most part.
I happen to venerate More despite the ferocity of his persecution of the Bible-mongers.
Unlike the right-wing Catholic Yahoos who fulminate here, the elegant minds who rule on canonizations understand that a life must be judged in terms of its totality–and particularly in terms of the readily apprehendable “learning curve” that most good lives take. Saints are not “perfect people” (there were only one or two of those, according to dogma), and mistakes made out of pure zeal for the good or lapsed judgment are forgiven. This is a common understanding among historians (who make their judgments about historical figures “in the context of their–not our–times”) and the clerics who manage canonization processes.
My problem with this series is NOT that the producers venerate More; I “venerate More.” My problem with what they’ve produced is that they have so little respect for the public that they’ve offered a cardboard image of a flawed but very holy person, fearing that viewers are so immature that they’d not be able to understand that “heroic sanctity” can be rooted in human weakness.
With such across the spectrum approval of this series I’m now putting this on my Netflix queue!
What I did not particularly enjoy about the first season was how they made it seem that it was More who was insistent on murdering the heretics and not Henry himself.
Contrary to that sort of biased fiction, in reality, Henry sought to eradicate such heretics within his Kingdom not only due to his original devotion to Catholicism but also due to the seditious threat it posed to his Kingdom.
Moreover, if More was such a bloodthirsty killer of the heretics, I am greatly dismayed by the fundamental fact that in all his time as Lord Chancellor, privy to the King’s High Council, placed in charge of such affairs as these, by order of the State, the man only sent 3 to suffer such penalty in all his years in his official capacity as this “fiendish” Grand Inquisitor.
Quite a remarkable Murderer was More!
Ari
I agree, there is a lot of misinformation on St Thomas More, inspired in part from Foxes’ Book of Martyrs, which has information which cannot be correct, but has inspired some people to see him as some sort of power-mad hater of humanity. It’s more than a little strange, to say the least. Of course, he wasn’t perfect, and he lives within the mores of his time, but being a saint doesn’t mean one is perfect in all they do, only they have been perfected in Christ by the time of their canonization.
Here’s the sympathetic but critical biography that comes as close as this age is going to get in being objective about Thomas More:
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Thomas-More-Biography-Richard-Marius/dp/0006269982/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1243360558&sr=8-3
I don’t know about you folks, but the better I understand his weaknesses, the more saintly he seems.
Have any of you seen the film about Joan of Arc called The Messenger? Almost every Catholic I knew in America who’d seen seen it considered it blasphemous, whereas I considered it deeply reverential; I thought that the cloaked figure played by Dustin Hoffman who challenged Joan to become humble enough to admit that she just might be wrong about her “visions” was actually purifying her for death and helping her to turn herself into a “saint.” But, as someone else has written elsewhere on this website, I’m just an “over-the-edge personality.”
Just viewed the first two episodes of the first season last night with my buddies and there is way too much sex. Graphic sex, to the point of being soft-porn. Other than that, the dialogue, sets, costumes, are pretty cool.
Though it seems that most of the characters are just walking through their lines, but it’s enough to catch my interest.
It’s not quiet like the HBO series Rome, but it does have a lot of gratuitous graphic sex scenes like Rome.
digbydolben,
I would think that most folks would have considered that climactic dialogue in the end of The Messenger between Dustin’s character (though marvelously played by Hoffman) and Joan as nothing more than an attempted portrayal of Joan as being more but the very product of some queer madness; a figure of insanity, in other words; hardly a purification.
As I said, I’m an “over-the-edge personality,” not “most people.”
It wasnt’ meant as a compliment, I know, but I take it as such.
digbydolben:
I suppose that in the end, that may very well be a redeeming quality (albeit, at times, that very same sparkling quality of yours can be quite regrettable depending on the discussion). *wink*
Just viewed the first two episodes of the first season last night with my buddies and there is way too much sex. Graphic sex, to the point of being soft-porn. Other than that, the dialogue, sets, costumes, are pretty cool.
Tito — I agree. That said, the gratuitous sex kind of peters out by the 2nd or 3rd season. My own subjective impression, but I thought the scenes remain to some extent but play second fiddle to the relationship btw/ Henry and More — and later, the plundering of the monasteries and the suppression of the Catholic rebellion. Depictions of Henry’s lust can only go so far as a story point before it gets tedious.
Likewise, a post on which Morning’s Minion and I are in complete agreement. Who’d of thought? =)
With such across the spectrum approval of this series I’m now putting this on my Netflix queue!
Some folks had actually collected clips from the Series and dedicated a tribute to Sir Thomas More.
Here’s an attempt at a “fair & balanced” treatment of the Life of Sir More (pursuant, of course, to the tale as told hence):
Martyr [Sir Thomas More, The Tudors]
And here’s the more sentimental one:
The Tudors: My Immortal (Sir Thomas More Tribute)
Martyr [Sir Thomas More, The Tudors]
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HZz_uRaG4qY
The Tudors: My Immortal (Sir Thomas More Tribute)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FdO7FxvMlu8
Ari,
Quite the following St. Thomas More has among Tudor fans. You have to wonder how many who wouldn’t have investigated his life otherwise were moved by this series, and if the authors @ Showtime intended such. =)
Christopher:
Actually, it’s been a mixed bag, really; there are a proportionally greater viewership (unfortunately) who rather than even commit any sort of due diligence concerning the life of More, based solely on The Tudors series vehemently protest Sir Thomas More, the man himself, and wholly detest the Catholic Church for having made a Muderer such as he and unconscionably proclaimed him a Saint; for which, I thank that somebody had the forsight to create the “Martyr” video to take all such aspects into account and weave (even if inadequate given the fact it is, like these unrefined thoughts of the masses, based solely on the mere series) a final blend of that sort of thoughtful examination.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HZz_uRaG4qY
Tito — I agree. That said, the gratuitous sex kind of peters out by the 2nd or 3rd season. My own subjective impression, but I thought the scenes remain to some extent but play second fiddle to the relationship btw/ Henry and More — and later, the plundering of the monasteries and the suppression of the Catholic rebellion. Depictions of Henry’s lust can only go so far as a story point before it gets tedious.
I have the second season in my Netflix queue already. And looking forward to seeing less sex and more history.
I agree with you and MM on this thus far. Count me in as surprised as having similar tastes as MM!